


Lessons in Healing

by MittenCrab



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Bipolar Anders, Bipolar Disorder, Blood and Gore, Bodily Fluids, Canon Mentally Ill Character, Character Study, Choking, Circle of Magi, Depression, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Lyrium Poisoning, Lyrium abuse, M/M, Mania, Medical Trauma, Minor Character Death, Oral Sex, Pre-Game(s), Self-Harm, Smut, Suicidal Thoughts, Vomiting, non-chantry approved use of creation magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 16:20:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6712288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MittenCrab/pseuds/MittenCrab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anders is fire and light and rage - also known as a teenage revolution waiting to happen - and learning to be a healer is a difficult path. Karl is the one good thing about the prison that is Kinloch Hold. Irving really just wants to keep the peace. Everyone has an awful lot of lessons to learn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lessons in Healing

**Author's Note:**

> It's worth mentioning that Bipolar disorder is experienced very differently by different people. By its nature it's incredibly, impossibly varied, and how one person experiences it does not necessarily bear any resemblance to the way that other people do. This fic is informed largely by my own experience with Bipolar ii, but please do not take it as a guide to the illness as a whole.
> 
>  
> 
> I know some people will just be here for the smut. If you just want the bit with the dicks then go to V.
> 
>  
> 
> Mnemosynea has podfic'd this! I'm ridiculously humbled and honoured that someone wanted to podfic my work. To listen to it, see the link in the endnotes.

 

**I.**

 

He is twelve when they first bring him to Kinloch, shivering and tear-stained and feral, wrists raw with dried blood from struggling against the iron they have chained him with. Years later, he will understand that it is the worst age - old enough to  feel the vacuous gnawing ache of everything he’s lost; young enough to have no idea how to cope with it. Dragged into a room that smells overpoweringly of elfroot and smoke, head swimming with the overwhelming claustrophobia of too many voices speaking too many words too quickly in a tongue that is not his own, he stares at the elaborately-patterned carpet through burning eyes and feels crushed by the weight of dysphoric vertigo. There is a black creature writhing in his stomach that makes him want to retch with the knowledge that he is so, so far from home.

 

He is spoken to but he refuses to speak. He has nothing to say. He has already spat out every Anderfels profanity that he knows and let loose curses kissed with venom. But now his fight has burned to ashes like the barn that placed him here, and so he is silent. The cloying heaviness of magebane and bile clings heavily in his mouth, has done all day, and the scraping of ethereal voices he has known since childhood is exhausting him. He is desperate for water - but when a hand offers him a chalice of something that smells of sleep and herbs and cut grass, he locks his jaw so tightly that his head aches and turns away. The low voice that speaks to him is soft with reassurances, but the language it uses is Common, not Ander, and it makes him want to scream. Eventually, the enchanter stops attempting to coax him into drinking. They sit in silence punctuated by his heaving chest and clenched fists and wet, tear-smeared inhalations. When he is finally taken to a wooden bunk, he all but collapses into it. He faces the hard stone wall of his new cage, presses his fists into his eyes until he sees sparks, and sobs himself into an unrestful sleep.

 

For weeks, he says nothing at all. When other apprentices offer him their names, he offers them the sharp turn of his back. He spends his days staring down at his feet and bites his tongue until his mouth fills with the taste of salt and dirty coin. He is offered smiles, held out tentatively to him like some small treat held to a frightened animal, but he avoids these too. He does not want them. When it becomes clear that he will not give them a name, the other apprentices begin to call him ‘the Ander’. He clings to it even more tightly than he clings to the fabric of the small pillow embroidered by his mother. Both are fragments of a heritage, of a life, of a home that can no longer be his. At night, he dreams of flames and burning. He wakes up with bile in his mouth and voices in his head and he wants to carve the magic out of his veins.

 

There are lessons and books and instructions but he will not take part in them. Even when they are offered kindly, they feel like iron being branded into his feral animal-skin, trying to shape him and own him and make him tame. He will not be tamed. He is a wild creature, all elbows and bone and raging blood, and he will _never_ be tamed. He knew this as soon as his hands erupted into fierce bright, monstrous, nauseating energy. The memory of the burning barn plays over and over in the fade at night and fills his mouth with the bitter taste of ash when he wakes. Soft, maternal voices in the fade speak to him in his father’s native tongue and lure him with promises of setting the Circle alight with blood and smoke if only he will let them help him, if only he will focus on his magic, but he does not want it. Magic feels as foreign and repulsive to him as a cancer, hideous and heaving and parasitic. It hurts and burns and blazes and destroys and he _does not want it_.

 

Sometimes, he hears hushed voices whispering to one another wondering whether he is mute, whether he has been born addled. Rumours fly that the harsh winters of the Anderfels shrivel the tissues of the brain, steal away the wits. Though he knows this is a lie, and that he has spent most of his life as part of the Anderfels disapora, in a village that was geographically, if not culturally, Ferelden, he does not correct them. The myths become his armour, the only thing that he can wear with pride now that he is forced to clothe himself in robes that make his skin and his soul itch. He tells himself that if they believe him too dull to cause harm, they will think that it has all been a terrible mistake and will let him go home. He knows it is not true.

 

When he finds the cat, it has been almost three weeks since he was dragged to Kinloch in irons. On the afternoon that it happens, he has crept into the shadow of some forgotten storeroom and wedged himself tightly into a cobweb licked shell of a once-wardrobe, hoping to find solace amongst faded linens and folded parchment.  His head throbs with exhaustion and the claustrophobic pressure of his new prison. He is weak and shivering from refusing to eat and his eyes burn with too many nights of too little rest. The voices in the fade have been clearer than ever since he arrived here, as though the proximity of lyrium and spell-casting has lit him up like a beacon, and he is too frightened to sleep. Being under constant observation makes his skin crawl, and being surrounded by magic only reminds him that it is inside him, and the thought makes him want to tear his own skin open, as though it is a festering wound that he can exorcise by ripping apart his stomach and letting the steaming entrails rush to the floor.  It is as he closes his aching eyes and presses his spine back into the wood and tries to focus on cool emptiness that he hears the mewling. At first, he thinks that he is finally going mad. But when he clambers out of his hiding place, he hears it again.

 

Some minutes later, having lifted chest lids and peered underneath half-rotten remains of old furniture and checked beneath piles of things he does not even have a name for, he finds it. Nestled in a pile of over-worn bedsheets, a large tabby cat pants and mewls, all soft fur and nervous darting eyes. As he slowly edges towards it, its gaze follows him, untrusting, He moves slowly, step by step, and then all at once he is in front of it. The cat yowls at him, a sickly paper-thin cry, and it is then that he understands. With the slowest movements he can manage, he reaches out to put his hand on the swollen belly, feels the tight contraction of muscle and sinew, and suddenly he is back at home, amongst the smell of hay and animal-sweat, watching the heaving breaths of the sheep as they whine through their labour pains.

 

He settles next to the pregnant cat and soothes her with Ander words that he hasn’t spoken in weeks, stroking the back of his hand gently along the ridge of her spine. The fur is so soft and so warm against his fingers and for a moment, it feels like home. Her whining mewls start to quiet under the light pressure of his hands, and they sit together, the cat and the boy, in the room that smells like wood dust and charcoal and old parchment. When she pants and whines and tenses, he smiles and hushes her with murmured encouragements and endearments and soothes his fingers through her fur.

 

The first kitten comes in a wet rush, and then a second, and a third, and a fourth. All the while, he chatters away to the cat as she licks the tiny, soft wriggling babies clean. It is the most he has talked in weeks. He commends the kittens on the perfect tiny points of their ears and their diminutive quivering whiskers and the chubby flailing pads of their miniature paws. The room is filled with the sound of almost impossibly small mews and his own voice, talking and talking and telling the cat how wonderful she is, how spectacular. Happier than he has been since he came to the Circle, he rubs behind her ears affectionately whilst she nurses the kittens, his chest full of pride and warmth and peace.

 

But then there is blood in his nose and yowling in his ears and something is so, so _wrong_ and the cat’s cries are hysterical. He rushes to put his hand against her belly, desperate to find what is happening, and the muscles strain and heave and there is blood on his fingertips, hot and sticky. His mind screams with images of rupturing flesh and membranes ripping, and it’s unfair, it’s so maker damned _unfair_ that his hands shake and his eyes sting and he can barely breathe. The cat struggles violently under his hands. He yells and curses and feels his chest constricting and it feels like drowning and he wants to help, needs to help, needs to make it stop, but he can’t, he can’t, he can’t-

 

And then suddenly, it’s in his veins. All at once the burning thrumming energy of the fade, blue-green and shivering, is coursing through him and he is alive with it. He is himself, but at the same time he is something more, something bigger and greater and ethereal. There is energy shining and pulling from his fingertips, and without even understanding, he presses them to the cat’s straining fur and suddenly he can feel the intricate vascular architecture of the body in detail that would be excruciating were it not so blindingly wonderful. His fingertips feel bloodstained fur and heaving muscle but some newfound clarity lets his mind feel deeper, feel the bloodied tear in a membrane, feel the faltering heartbeat of a final tiny kitten trapped and struggling for birth. He screws his eyes shut and grits his teeth and allows the surging energy inside him to guide him around this light spiritual map of a body, tissues and veins like constellations that he can rearrange and repaint to mend and soothe and ease. There is sweat on his palms and down his face from the physical exertion and his hands are shaking but he carries on, weaving the corpuscular fibres back together like a tapestry that tells a story of the body’s rhythm - inhale-exhale-heartbeat.

 

He throws this new version of himself into it with all that he can, feels the post-human potential flooding through him like water and then there’s a straining movement of flesh and bone and suddenly there’s a fifth tiny body in front of him taking its first shuddering breaths. He can’t stop crying and he doesn’t know why. He watches, chest heaving, eyes swimming with salt, as the cat leans, alive and purring and contented, to tenderly clean the final kitten. With trembling, still-bloody hands, he pets the warm fur, feels it brimming with life and energy and health, and laughs through the tears that refuse to stop. Warmth blooms in his chest as he watches the kittens nurse and suckle and he rests his head next to the cat to feel the vibration of her purring. In that moment, drowsy and happy and tear-marked, he finally understands that magic is more than destruction.

 

When Irving finds him later, smiling and tearful as he holds a nest of tiny sleeping kittens in his lap, Anders finally feels ready to speak.

 

* * *

 

 

**II.**

 

It is after the third escape attempt that he is summoned to Irving’s office. He is sixteen and brittle with frustration. He has been near-mute and sullen and snapping ever since he was dragged back to Kinloch. The patchwork of purple-green bruises on his arms from struggling and cursing in the grip of his templar captors smart and ache, and his tongue is thick with the taste of poultices and tinctures that Wynne has forced down his throat for days to stop the puss-welted swelling of a badly infected broken rib, but none of it pains him so acutely as the gnawing end of the freedom that he has lost once again. He managed over a month, this time. A month with clear air in his lungs and no eyes on his back. His time away only makes the Circle walls feel closer around him. Anders stares defiantly at the first-enchanter’s door and imagines setting it on fire.

 

Irving ushers him in with an unreadable look on his face. Anders has hated Irving’s office ever since he was first dragged to it as a child. The spiralling patterns of the carpet, - worn thin in patches and stained in others - make his eyes hurt. The room, with its rows of red and ochre leather tomes and haphazardly arrayed arcane curiosities, smells overwhelmingly, as always, of charcoal and elfroot. Anders is sick of maker-damn _elfroot_. The whole Circle stinks of it. Strung-up on the aggressive fantasy of letting one of the Circle mousers urinate all over Irving’s damn carpets and make the room smell of cat piss instead, he starts when he notices that they have company. A young man sits in a chair by the fire, staring at him with poorly concealed interest. Anders stares back cooly. No doubt another of Irving’s many attempts to endear him to the Circle. He will not be swayed. As the hand on his shoulder steers him to a chair opposite the stranger, he bites his tongue and prepares himself to stare at the floor whilst this man he has never met extols the virtues of a Circle education and compliance with the first-enchanter’s wishes. He flicks sparks of magic between his fingers disinterestedly and refuses to look the other man in eye.

 

But then the man starts talking to him, and he is so thrown by it that it takes him a moment to realise that he is being spoken to in _his own language_. Kinloch Hold is always over-full of voices speaking and sighing and laughing in Common, and it makes the space under his ribcage feel hot and tight to be continually forced back to this place where nobody speaks Ander. He speaks flawless Common, can even read a little - the product of growing up as part of a diaspora whose every trade agreement was signed and stamped in the common tongue. But here, in this stone-and-speech prison, he regularly refuses to do so. It feels like compliance, like surrendering what little scraps he has left of his heritage. Only fade demons speak to him in his language now.

 

He is sure it is some kind of trick, that they’ve finally tired of the ‘skinny blonde headache’ and decided to throw him through the Harrowing as an excuse to wash him from their hands like dirt. None of the apprentices know what the Harrowing entails, but rumours run fast and thick amongst young students with little else to do. The library is frequently rustled with strains of gossip, and the fabled Harrowing is always on the edge of everyone’s minds. The whispered consensus is that it involves demons.

 

You’re a demon, he blurts in Ander, and he is sure that it is true. He takes in the grey-brown hair, the eyes the colour of smoke, the scrape of stubble along his jaw, the robes that mark him as a Harrowed mage, and tries to find the cracks in this illusion. But the man laughs softly and his eyes crinkle a little at the corners as he shakes his head and smiles - no, not a demon. A friend.

 

Anders glances between Irving and this stranger in complete bafflement. It is a trick. He is sure it is a trick. He is convinced that as soon as he shows even a splinter of fear or weakness, the young man in front of him with melt away from his own flesh and engulf him in smoke and drag him into the sweating belly of the fade. His palms tingle with sweat at the thought of it. And yet, he has felt demons before, sensed their unique weight and translucency. His particular talents have marked him for the path of a spirit healer, a rare soul who journeys the dusty paths on the edge of the fade to bring life. Wynne has guided him time and again towards demons to accustom him to their peculiar physiology. This man, with his soft intonation and his ink-stained fingers does not feel like one of them. He looks again to Irving, swallows heavily.

 

It’s alright, the man tells him, we can talk, it’s fine. It is safe.

 

So he begins to talk - slowly at first. There is still a shiver at the base of his neck that warns him to be vigilant, and his tongue is unpractised from so many months wrangling with other people's vocabulary. He speaks with deliberation and caution as though weighing up a duelling partner. Soon, he learns that the other man’s name is Karl Thekla, that he was born near Laysh but brought South by a Nevarran trade caravan following a particularly harsh winter that saw most of his village burned on smoking pyres that reeked of sick-beds and decayed meat. His parents were among the dead. Perhaps the trauma or the savagery of the winter storms provoked the first tentative bursts of electricity from his hands - perhaps it was nothing more than simple maturity. In any case, the result is the same. He has been in Circles since he was nine years old. Almost fifteen years.

 

Anders bites his tongue until his mouth fills with the acrid taste of copper and his eyes prickle with splinters of firelight.Since the barn went up in a cloud of spiralling smoke and sealed his sentence, he has been in the Circle for four years, and every day he is almost sick with wanting it to end. Fifteen years is almost a lifetime. All for being born with a little magic, for inadvertently letting it show. The oppressive swell of the heavily incensed office suddenly makes him feel like he is suffocating.

 

How do you stand it, he demands of Karl, stares down at his own clenched fists in his lap - how do you not go mad? He feels like every day at Kinloch makes his thoughts a little louder, the itch of voices in the fade a little hotter.  

 

Karl looks into the fire with its spitting embers, and the smile on his face is sad. He shrugs and asks if Anders remembers any of the Anderfels wisdom, any of the string of proverbs that weave together the old stories. He nods, remembers dozy fire-lit heather-smoke evenings, being lullabied by grandiose tales of ancestral forefathers and their knowledge, remembers being clouted around the head and reprimanded with some of the many traditional sayings.

 

 _Those who wish for good must seek it_ , Karl recalls. The familiarity of it is like a second skin, and he is sure they both shudder with how it chafes, this once warm heritage become ill-fitted and scratchy through too many days in Ferelden. He turns to Anders and the pain in his eyes eases a little as he smiles. I’m researching, he says. For a thesis. A manifesto. One day people like us will be free. You’ll see.

 

What he doesn’t say hangs heavy; like us, but _not_ us. It’s too late for that.

 

There is a moment of silence that threatens to suffocate them. Quickly, Anders offers a new proverb - _he whose Circle smells like templar shit must cover it with elfroot_. He nods his head slightly in Irving’s direction and pulls a face. Irving smiles mildly, utterly unaware that his heavily perfumed Circle has just been made the butt of a joke. Karl glances between Anders and the grand enchanter, eyebrows raising and his mouth quirking as he chokes on a little snorting laugh. The sound of it makes Anders’ chest feel warm.

 

Soon, the two of them are chatting and gesturing and laughing, Ander words flying thick and fast. Anders tells Karl about the time that he spread a rumour that there were secret passages in the walls and had the templars frantically knocking on each stone for weeks trying to work out where they were. He tells him about the time he saved a cat and her five tiny kittens. He tells him about the time he let one of the Circle cats shit behind the statue of Andraste just before a chapel service and tried to keep a straight face as a fresh-faced young templar struggled, coughing and retching, to complete the chant as though nothing was wrong. He tells him about the time a templar, having heard of his healing talents, came quietly to him late at night begging for a cure for a disease that was curiously venereal for someone so apparently _chaste_ , and he nodded seriously and sagely offered what he claimed was a herbal remedy. The man didn’t stop shitting himself for days. The templar didn’t dare reveal the misdemeanour for fear of exposing himself, but naturally, the apprentices got wind of the rumour (and the smell). ‘Ser Shits-a-Lot’ could barely walk the halls without a mage sniggering and had eventually been forced to leave the Circle altogether in shame. Karl smiles at all of his stories, and it makes the ache in his chest a little lighter.

 

Karl explains his research, how he has been moved to Kinloch because of the extensive library, how he is working on developing new magics. Anders listens, barely understanding at all, but savouring the way that Karl’s hands gesture subconsciously when he talks and his eyes light up with excitement. Somewhere beneath his ribs he feels a tingling rush that somebody is speaking _his language_. Smiling has never come easily in the Circle, but now his face aches with it, and he feels almost like he is home. He babbles and laughs and for the first time in his years at Kinloch, looks every bit the happy, settled apprentice.

 

They talk for hours. When the fire starts to burn low and Anders is yawning and damp-eyed from all of the excitement, Irving lightly places a hand on his shoulder and suggests that it is time for him to sleep. It is the first Common he has heard since he walked into the room, and it takes his drowsy brain a moment to adjust to the language shift, but eventually he nods in agreement. Tentatively, he asks Karl if they can speak again. The young man nods, smiles in that warm way that he has, and tells him in Common that he would like that. Anders is unsure why it makes his chest flutter, but he knows that it makes him feel so happy that he wants to burst.

 

* * *

 

**III.**

 

He is years older now, honed and sharpened by the Circle’s instruction, but he is still not tame. He is still a wild thing, smoke and electricity and light.

 

Sometimes, he becomes so obsessed with practicing that he forgets how to sleep. The less he sleeps, the more he becomes filled with crackling, electrifying urges to continually try again and push harder and work longer, knowing that he is wavering on the precipice of greatness. His head is so ablaze with thoughts that it is like a humming, swarming nest of bees, and he is so alive, so much more than himself, but he is sure he can become something even _bigger_ if only he practices a little longer.  Anders flicks the static from his hands. Sparks scorch tiny blackened scars into the scattered books and the wooden desk in front of him. Full of shuddering energy, he takes another drag of lyrium and tries to focus on the training exercises. He summons up unseen spiritual defences in his mind and tries to remember to breathe the way that Wynne has shown him so many times, both inside and outside of the fade, so that he can sustain a barrier, hold it steady and solid and unwavering and-

 

His mind is too fast, and concentration snaps like an over-drawn bowstring. The otherwise silent library, with its scent of herbs and charcoal and poultices, is stabbed with the sounds of laughter and too-fast native-tongued profanity. Only Karl talks to him in Ander. None of the other Circle residents know the language. He speaks Common so often now that he even _dreams_ in it, and sometimes his chest hurts at the way that his culture has been overwritten by someone else's words. There is something defiant about being able to curse in his the language of his home, his village with its grey furs and lavender incense. Naturally, he does so routinely and with voracious savagery. A younger apprentice who has been reading next to him for some time with evidently growing anxiety quickly skitters away at this latest outburst, hands clutching a book like some kind of shield. Somehow, Anders finds the young mage’s fear hilarious. Of course he is frightening. He is light itself.

 

Smiling to himself, he reaches for one of the (stolen) lyrium bottles he has lined up in front of him on the desk, sparkling and blue, and lets the metallic tang of it bloom on his tongue and shoot through his veins and fill his every sinew with rushing light. There are already eight empty glass vials lying discarded. Kinloch’s supply of lyrium is carefully monitored by its tranquil storekeepers and the older enchanters, but Anders has long-since found that a little charm, some minor herbalism and a few silver-tongued visits to the stores are more than enough currency to boost his personal supply. Part of him knows that there is a reason lyrium consumption is controlled. Part of him - the louder part - has a penchant for this kind of glorious self destruction. The knowledge that it is dangerous only heightens the raw euphoria of it.

 

Everything that Wynne has taught him tells him that he needs to stop. He can almost imagine the matriarchal lull of her voice as she reprimands him - spirit healers must know their limits. To be a spirit healer is to embrace vigilance like a lover, to take restraint as a bed-fellow. It is long hours of practising in solitude. It is the endless discipline. It is, she has told him, about control. But Anders, with his thoughts on fire and his hands full of static and raging lust in his spine, knows no limits. He is infinite and unbridled, a blazing crescendo. And so, he keeps going.

 

He tries again, feels the undulating tug of magic through his every nerve. His skin prickles. The glorious ice-blue thrill of the lyrium feels like fucking. Anders closes his eyes and focuses on the rhythm of his own inhaling and exhaling. He forms a barrier, shapes it, feels alive with the membrane of pure energy that he has created, that he has birthed from his own soul. Breathing carefully, he holds it, feels the magic’s silky-sleek pull as it swims and vibrates through him. Time is cracking into tiny fragile pieces like cheap glass. His consciousness is racing and hyper-sensitive, and he is aware of his body’s every breath and shiver and it’s sensual and primordial and-

 

When his barrier shatters into splinters of energy, he lets loose a string of vibrant, frustrated curses, feels lightning crackle on his fingers until it burns, and opens his eyes. He scrapes dishevelled strands of long blonde hair from his eyes, grits his teeth, smiles without even knowing why. It is then that he notices that he is being watched. A templar, all glimmering steel, is staring at him from the doorway. His folded arms and straight back and metallic righteousness are too sharp and clean against the musty homeliness of the library, and it feels like blood in his mouth. The young mage from earlier, still clutching his book, hovers nearby, eyes darting between the pile of empty lyrium bottles and Anders’ hands. His mind flares in racing white rage at the betrayal, and his fingertips light up with spitting electric embers. He is _practicing_ . He is being a _good mage_. This is what they’ve always wanted of him, isn’t it? Soft and pliant and cooperative. They can’t stop him from practicing. He is doing nothing wrong.

 

He stares the templar directly in the eyes, a raw challenge, as he reaches for the lyrium again and downs another vial. The primal desire to set the over-polished armour on fire and let it burn to ash repeats again and again in his mind. His heart is hammering deliciously in his chest with the adrenal thrill of a potential fight, and the cool, sensual slide of the liquid down his throat and into the topography of his veins makes him alive all over again.

 

Anders inhales deeply, thoughts thrumming, and tries to focus on pulling the magic through his skin and forming it into something impenetrable and unfailing and strong. Spirit healing is the most dangerous of disciplines - Wynne and Irving have constantly warned him of the dangers in the fade, of the knife-edge that he needs to dance between spirits and demons. Laying himself bare for spirit aid leaves him an open cavity, a strung-up carcass for less savoury residents of the fade to gnaw at with greedy, hungry teeth. Sometimes, when Wynne takes his hands and pulls him into the fade with her, he is twelve years old again and the barn burns so brightly in front of his eyes that it almost makes him blind. This is why he practices. He practices pulling up barriers, fortifying his own tumbling racing mind that is singing white and hot with a thousand ideas and potentials. Few mages can master the path of the spirit healer. Anders needs to. It is the only thing that ever makes his magic stop feeling like dirt.

 

But he cannot focus, not now, not with the dark eyes of the templar watching him so intensely that he can almost feel it physically on his over-sensitive skin. They are always watching him. They are always waiting for him to trip up. His mind is so full and he is so desperate for _more_ that he feels like he might crack open in a tumbling stream of light and lyrium and creation and his hands are twitching and shaking and his blood is rushing. He lets out a feral sound of exasperation and pushes himself to his feet. The heat of flames streams into his palms, singeing the corners of the desk where his hands grip it and sending the smell of log fires into the air. The lyrium is screaming in his veins and his hands are trembling with raw energy and there is power dancing along his fingertips. He sees the templar begin to move towards him, one hand already reaching for the sword at his hip, and Anders is effervescent with the grimy euphoria of it all, with the thrill of a fight he cannot win.

 

And then, out of nowhere, Karl is in front of him, Karl with his grey eyes and his clever hands. Anders laughs because he is so pleased to see him, is _always_ so pleased to see him, and he wants to kiss him. His thoughts are whirling and his spine is prickling hotly with an urgent, growling hunger that tells him to drop to his knees like a cheap whore and lose his mind to the feel of Karl’s cock in his mouth and Karl’s hands twisting and pulling in his hair and the sticky-thick rush of Karl’s cum down his throat. He wants to just let Karl fuck him right in front of the templar as an act of carnal rebellion, wants to leave a stain on that maker-damned spotless armour and that Chantry-polished soul. Instead, he starts to tell him about the symphony of thoughts in his head, about how close he is to being something _infinite_ and how the lyrium is singing to him and how his whole body is alive with it. But it is wrong. Karl’s face is full of concern. All at once his mind is too fast and too big and too full, his two languages twisting and tripping over one another, and the exhaustion of pushing himself too hard for days is making his vision flicker grey. And he can feel hot blood dripping from his nose and his thoughts spin and flicker in a nauseating spiral that sticks in his throat and churns in his stomach and everything is all too much and suddenly his mouth floods with salt.

 

He vomits in a rush of lyrium-blue.

 

Later, he lies shivering and wretched and sweating on his bunk, Karl at his side, and miserably tries to swallow down sips of a tea that tastes of ginger and elfroot and valerian. Wynne has promised that it will let him sleep. She has already reprimanded him with pitying eyes and seen to it that his illicit stash of lyrium has been removed. There is little else she can do. She cannot undo the stress placed on a body forced through too much magic and lyrium poisoning, and not even the light of a spirit healer can cure the chaos in his head. His senses are foggy with bile and mucus and lyrium tang, and with the euphoria rapidly dissolving, he is leaden with over-exertion. His limbs feel foreign and cold and heavy, as though they don’t really belong to him at all, but have instead been gifted through some bizarre divine solecism, just like the magic that made him burn down a barn as a child. Everything is dulled and yet knife-edge sharp all at once. There is a blanket over him, which feels comforting, but the rough wool makes his skin itch. His thoughts are still too fast, and trying to stave off the nausea they induce makes his jaw clench and unclench involuntarily, but Karl’s hand is cool and soothing on his forehead. It feels so good that he thinks he wants it to stay there forever. In this moment, he thinks it feels _almost_ better than sex. He must have said it aloud, because Karl laughs softly and calls him something that loosely translates to being an “insufferable nuisance” but is quietly laden with affection, stroking back his sweat-damp hair. After too many days of unbridled speed and a thousand blazing possibilities, the tea and the comfort of Karl’s hand in his hair tug him gently into the fade, and Anders finally sleeps.

 

It is not the last time that it happens. The shaking and nausea and lipid heaviness that come with pushing too hard eventually become unfavourable familiar friends. Karl starts to learn how to make Wynne’s herbal teas and how best to ease the fever-aches that gnaw at him for days afterwards. Each time he ends up retching lyrium he swears by Andraste that it is the last time he will practice too hard. It never is. Sometimes, he is frustrated by his inability to surpass himself. Sometimes his head is on fire with possibilities and so he pushes and pushes until they explode before his eyes and his hands go numb. Sometimes he is tear-smeared and raging at his gilded stone cage, a creature of fire and venom and broken bone that finds its only solace in the repetition of controlled breaths and the tide of lyrium as it pulls through his veins. Always, he needs to be _more_. He never stops trying.

 

* * *

  


**IV.**

 

He will lose many patients in his life, but the first one clings raw and screaming in his memory like a squalling newborn slick with bloody afterbirth. He is only an apprentice. Anders stands over a woman’s labouring body, breathes deeply as he has practised so often, holds onto the scent of elfroot act as an anchor, and lets the tugging symphony of the lyrium guide him towards the precipice of the fade. When he feels the spirit shivering in his veins, a haze of blue and green and woodland air, he begins as he has done so many times before. Anders lets the spirit guide him through the labyrinthine cartography of someone else’s body in its every shudder and heartbeat.

 

It is supposed to be a simple childbirth. It is not supposed to be complicated. It is not beyond him, and he knows this. He has done this before, countless times. But suddenly there is blood, too much blood. It clings to his hands in a hot syrupy tide, and he can barely comprehend it at first. Frantic, he tries to navigate the tangled sinews and the bright, vascular architecture with his magic, but everything is awash with the scent of copper and the taste of sweat and the terrifying fragility of human breaths, and no matter how hard he pushes, he can’t _understand_ . His own heartbeat pounds in his ears. He yells and demands more lyrium, and then there is a bottle in his hand. Without even thinking, he throws it back and feels the metallic rush of it in his veins, lets it burn bright, and immediately he is weaving veins and flesh in a symphony of life, reforging them as something newer, stronger, harder. He is vibrant and alive with the liquid swell of magic as it paints across the body like a canvas. But every time he tries, his work instantly pulls apart, as easily as over-worn seams of thread. His chest starts to feel tight and he needs more lyrium, just a little more, but even as he swallows it down he knows that it won’t be enough. It won’t ever be enough. But he tries and tries and maker be damned, he _tries_ . For long, awful minutes he tussles with the spirit in his consciousness, vehemently willing the stream of magic to hold the failing body together, chasing the heartbeat that is writhing and flailing away from him like a dying rabbit. It is a war that he is already destined to lose, a battle of tissue and faltering life and strain that compounds in his chest. Anders pleads and begs for his magic to maker-damn _work_. He panics.

 

And then it is over.

 

That night, he drinks until he is numb and wants to set the world on fire. Viscous echoes of blood cling to his consciousness, and no matter how much he drinks, he cannot stop tasting it on his tongue. For the first time in years, he craves the idea of burning the magic out of his veins. Doused in Aqua Magus, he wants to set his own flesh alight until it is forced out of him like an animal smoked from its den. It feels filthy and fickle, a lurid yellowing parasitic bruise that will never heal. It does not belong inside of him and he does not want it. Magic that he never wanted and never asked for has stolen away his home and his heritage and his native tongue, swallowing it all down until there is almost none of him left, and it has given him nothing in return. Magic does nothing but consume and take and lay to waste. It grips him so tightly that he wants to be sick.

 

By the time Irving and Wynne find him, curled on the floor in the freezing cob-webbed dark of the otherwise empty chapel, he is irredeemably drunk - sobbing and bloodshot and conflagrant with anger. They offer him soft words and condolences and potions whose fumes lure him with promises of medicated sleep and billowing blankets of silence. He does not want any of it. Every kindness tastes like ash and dirt. Their help is just another a chain to keep him pliant, to keep him blindly tied to the Circle. He spits and snarls against the suffocating tower walls that have become his prison, yells and screams at Irving for being complicit in it all, for allowing the iron chains and the spiritual leash. This is not his home. It was never his home. His hands claw and clench helplessly like dying spiders in his lap. Wynne tries to put her hand on his shoulder but he jerks away as if it is a slap. He shouts at her too, vitriolic and biting, for ever letting him believe that magic was anything other than a filthy stain on his soul that can never be clean. The years of practice and discipline meant nothing in the face of the maker’s will and the frailty of a human heart, and he can still feel the sticky heat of blood under his fingernails. He is stained. He can never be clean, not even if he scrubs himself to nothing more than lifeless dust and fractured bones. As long as there is magic inside of him, he will always be feral and dirty: a creature who once set a barn alight and watched it blaze.

 

Suddenly, there is the gleam of polished breastplates and the rasp of steel, and a burst of silencing magic that throws him back against the marble statue of Andraste and makes him choke on bile and blood. His alcohol-addled brain whispers that he will be made tranquil, ripped from his connection to the fade, snapped from the umbilical link to his every dream and sentience. The tightening grip of fear around his ribcage is only matched by the grip of a gauntleted hand on his shoulder. Irving’s usually calm voice is raised, and his back is defensively straight as he faces down two templars. Wynne’s hand protectively covers Anders’ own, but he is too drunk to understand the conversation being waged around him. His head is swimming and empty, and time feels smeared like paint through his limbs. The gnawing memory of the blood on his hands resigns him to whatever fate they decide to mete out to him. He is too exhausted to fight. Through a haze of inebriation, he is sure that they will kill him.

 

They do not. In the weeks that follow, he often wishes that they did.

 

When he is finally coaxed, shivering and torpid, into the warmth of the apprentice quarters, with its crackling fireplaces and rows of scarred wooden bunks, he sobs into Karl’s chest and scratches at his own hands until the skin is raw. Eventually he exhausts himself, slumps drunkenly into his bed, and lies there listless. Karl, with his enchanter’s wisdom, sits by his side and strokes back his hair and tells him again and again in their shared native tongue that it is not his fault, that it is the will of the maker. He wants to believe him. But even Karl cannot erase the splintering weight of the blood on his hands and the memory of flesh turning to purple, and now that he is drenched in alcohol the sound of his native tongue only reminds him of just how much he has lost in his years here. The softness of the familiar language stings him with the realisation of just how compliant he has become, how he has lowered his neck and let them fix a leash around it.

 

Anders bites his tongue until it bleeds and wonders if he will ever be free. The billowing log-smoke that smells of incense and dusky pine forests sits heavy in his lungs and chokes him, like the Circle chokes him with every passing day. There are voices talking around and over him, but they make his head ache and he is too tired. His eyes smart and his nose is stuffy and his tongue is numb and all he wants is to sleep and to wake up without the weight of magic in his skin.

 

From then on, he refuses to practice. He stops attending Wynne’s lessons. He sees no point in them. What good are lessons and discipline and the correct breathing pattern when the human body is rendered as fragile as gossamer by the will of the maker? Why does it matter if he can construct a perfect barrier if he cannot save a life? He feels like he has given every remaining scrap of himself to the pursuit of healing mastery, and he has nothing left to give. He is empty, scraped clean like a piece of meat until he is nothing but a compliant pellicle.

 

Karl tries to bring him food but the thought of swallowing makes bile rise up in his throat. Time slows, gelatinous and cloying, and he loses himself in it. He sleeps for hours and hours and yet never feels rested when he opens his eyes. Most days, Anders just lies on his bed in a dishevelled, lipid stupor and listens to Karl talking at him about his thesis. He dozes to the tune of theoretical marvels and scholarly curiosities. None of it makes any sense, but it does not have to. All he wants is for the lull of the older man’s voice to drag him back into sleep and stop his chest from aching.

 

The voices in the fade are louder than ever, whispering silken promises of freedom and release and _home_. He sees the burning barn and the blotchy purpling of human flesh and everything is awash with blood. The face of his mother tells him that he can come home if only he will agree to follow her, and Wynne’s voice promises him more power, bright and liquid-silver, so that he will never again have to feel death underneath his skin. Irving leaves the doors open for him to run. A voice that sounds like Karl’s whispers seductively in his ear of a knife that can be slipped up and between his ribcage and with one snick and a gush of lifeblood will cut him free him from the shivering fear of tranquility. Each night is a relentless glimmering stream of potential escapes and freedoms. It terrifies him. His constant lethargy feeds a squirming, burrowing anxiety deep in his chest that he has given in to a sloth demon without realising it. Each time he wakes, he demands that Karl checks that he is still himself and is almost too afraid to hear the answer each time. It is always the same: he is safe. He doesn’t feel it.

 

All the while Wynne forces him to eat and Irving turns a blind eye to the dishevelled apprentice squirrelled in his quarters ignoring his lessons, and the senior mage working on a thesis by his side. Karl moves a desk next to Anders’ nest of dirty blankets and babbles to him as he works - this new idea or that historical gem, a new place he has discovered in an atlas that would be ideal for a college of magi. Sometimes he snaps at them all, even Karl, vitriolic and spiked like a frightened cat. For all of his ability as a healer, Anders is a terrible patient. He turns his back on Wynne’s proffered bowls of soup and swears at Irving and shoves at Karl’s chest when the older man tries to comfort him or clean the grime of too much sleep out of his hair.

 

He heals, in time. He starts to practise again. It takes long, struggling, clawing weeks to happen, but eventually, it does. The grief does not heal. Anders tells himself that is is transformative, that it will become easier with time, that losing patients will stop hurting the way that it does. None of it is true. Each time, grief clings to his chest like another gleaming line of scar tissue that flares and aches and grips his nerves with phantom pains when he thinks it has recovered. He lets it.

 

* * *

 

**V.**

 

Knight Commander Greagoir sits raging poker-hot in Irving’s office trying to solve the perpetual headache that is Enchanter Thekla. He rubs irritably at his throbbing temples and tries to restrain the urge to grab hold of Irving, with his damn peace-keeper’s smile and his gentle voice, and physically shake some sense into him. The success of Kinloch Hold is forged between them, but it is not without its battles. Thekla, for example, is clearly a disaster waiting to happen. Being far too close to the blonde nuisance that is Anders (he is _sure_ that the closeness is bordering on carnal but he just can’t seem to catch enough evidence to prove it) should be condemnation in itself. Irving’s genial explanation is that Thekla’s presence is simply an act of vigilance - vigilance that is, of course, _Knight Commander_ , necessary when dealing with a spirit healer such as Anders, since the apprentice must constantly dabble at the line of the fade. Vigilance, after all, is key. Greagoir is no mage but he knows the scent of nugshit when he smells it. He is eternally caught spitting and swearing that the maker has a bloody terrible sense of humour to make the worst nuisance Kinloch has ever seen a _spirit healer_. Anders, with his rare talents, is too bloody valuable to lose to suspicion. It doesn’t stop him perpetually wanting to wring his skinny throat.

 

As if this isn’t enough, Enchanter Thekla (even thinking about the fact that he is an _enchanter_ now makes Greagoir want to spit blood) is working on a thesis that is thinly veiled propaganda at best and an mage rebellion waiting to happen at worst. Now, he is teaching his own classes, with experimental magics that Greagoir is convinced are not chantry approved. Every time he walks the halls of Kinloch now, he feels the cool ache in his bones that warns him that a storm is brewing. He is willing to put down coin on the chance that Thekla, with his maddening intellect and persistent scholarship, is the eye of it. The man is clearly a thaumaturgical genius, which in Greagoir’s vocabulary translates loosely to ‘walking magical catastrophe’. Irving smiles and nods mildly as though humouring a child throwing a tantrum and offers Greagoir a cup of chamomile tea. He slams a gauntleted fist down on the mage’s desk and tells him exactly where he can shove the maker-damned chamomile tea.

 

Enchanter Thekla is not present at the meeting discussing the potential threat that he poses to the ongoing success of Kinloch Hold. Enchanter Thekla is rather too busy teaching ‘experimental magics’ to an apprentice in a potion store-room.

 

Anders lets himself glance down, feels a rush of heat in his stomach, and chokes back a needy whine that threatens to escape from his throat. They’re supposed to be silent. Silence doesn’t seem particularly likely given that Karl is on his knees, breathing hard, his grey-brown hair tousled, warm, slick mouth just inches from where Anders is desperate for it to be. Blunt nails drag lightly up the back of his thighs, sending a hot shudder directly to his groin as Karl licks a wet, heated line up his cock. It’s teasing, a tingling guarantee of something more. Karl’s grey eyes flicker up to meet his, and seeing how wide his pupils are, how his chest heaves with how much he needs _this_ makes Anders shiver. When he lets his gaze drop to the way the Circle-issued trousers are clinging tightly to the other man’s crotch, he almost moans. His mouth is dry and there’s a cool burning sensation building in his chest like lightning and alcohol and stars.

 

The wanton, mewling little half-sounds that Karl makes when he takes Anders’ cock in his mouth make him dizzy. He takes in a sharp, shuddering breath and grabs frantically for the other man’s hair, tangling his fingers into it like an anchor. They can’t speak so they have a language all of their own, all frantic trembling fingers and skittering breaths and lips bitten so hard that they bleed. The incredible soft wetness of the mouth around him makes his blood rush and he shoves his head back against a wooden shelf so hard that it hurts. Karl presses his tongue hard against him and the weighty pressure of it is perfect. Anders claws his fingers as he starts to move, feeling the welcoming slide of Karl’s mouth over him, all spit-slick heat and silky tightness. And then the other man relaxes his jaw and all at once he’s in the unyielding intensity of Karl’s throat and it’s glorious, and he wants to fuck helplessly into it until he can’t think, can’t move, can’t do anything but surrender himself to the glide of cock and tongue and _more_. He chokes on air and tries to remember how to breathe. All at once the potion cupboard seems too warm and he is hyper-aware of the cool drops of sweat trailing down the curve of his neck.

 

Karl pulls away for a second, eyes watering and chest heaving. Dazed and needy, Anders forgets the importance of silence and keens with need, all _no_ and _more_ and _please_ but then Karl’s fingers are alight with yellow-green energy and he _knows_ what is next. He cannot take his eyes away as Karl looks up at him, panting and flushed, pushes his sweaty hair back from his face with one wrist, and smirks. He is a beautiful goddamn wreck of a Circle enchanter, and he looks so horribly pleased with himself as he trails grease-slicked fingers up Ander’s thighs, oily and smooth and dripping. Magic must serve man, but, as Karl points out, it’s useful for fucking man too. It’s a compelling argument. Especially as his fingers start to wander closer and closer. Anders hisses through his teeth because it’s so teasing but it isn’t enough. Then those wonderful clever fingers are stroking in thick smooth circles just _there_ , and Karl’s pupils are blown wide with lust as he takes him apart. He tries to push his thighs wider apart, let those fingers push him further and further towards what he wants. Need streaks hot and cold at the base of his spine and whines are tearing and clawing to break free from his chest and he scrabbles encouragingly at the other man’s hair.

 

And then Karl practically _keens_ deep in his throat as he takes Anders into his mouth all at once just as one of his fingers presses into his arse and Anders almost loses it entirely because it feels so incredibly horribly _good_.

 

Fucking _fuck_ , he whines in Ander, overwhelmed nearly to incoherence, and Karl makes a tiny laughing sound through his nose and bats at his thigh, a wordless warning to shut up. Anders quickly bites down on his own tongue. His hands tangle urgently in Karl’s damp hair and guide that beautiful wet mouth over and over and over his cock. Breathing in short, heavy gasps, he feels his stomach pulling hotter and tighter and the cool tingle at the base of his spine as Karl licks and sucks and strokes. The finger sliding slowly in and out of his arse is making him come completely undone. He looks down as he feels the heady pressure of another grease-slicked fingertip against the hot ring of muscle, and sees Karl raise an eyebrow questioningly. Anders gives a quick nod, breathes deeply, and tries to keep himself relaxed against the stretch of it. And then there is the slick friction of a second finger pushing inside him, and before long, a third. When he is full and stretched and helpless, Karl sends a white-hot tingling spark of electric power rushing into his veins from his fingertips and it takes all he has in him not to sob because it’s all so good, too good.

  
Everything smells of a rush of sweat and need and salt, and it’s intoxicating. The tiny store-room is filled with soft, wet sounds as Karl shoves his spare hand into his trousers and starts to stroke himself in fast, needy jerks as he sucks him off. He looks filthy like this, on a dirty storeroom floor with his hair spiked with sweat and his hand desperately fucking himself into oblivion and his mouth stretched around the thick shaft of Anders’ cock. He looks filthy and it is all too wonderful and Anders is lost in it, as though Karl is surging through his veins.

 

And then there is a targeted, heavy, throbbing burst of lightning that makes his nerves crackle and he spasms involuntarily around Karl’s clever mage fingers. He whimpers. It comes again and again, shooting white prickling pressure into him and his mind runs blank with the hedonistic pleasure. Helplessly, he surrenders to the buzzing, clenching stimulation and lets himself be dragged into it. He is lost to the rhythmic pull of the muscle contractions that he has no control over and his legs are shaking and he can feel Karl’s mouth getting slicker with thick dribbles of his precum and it only makes everything wetter and more wonderful and he is gone far too deep to go back. He lets himself teeter on the precipice, hips stuttering as he tries to fuck himself with Karl’s fingers and his face all at once and the pulsating clenching tide of electricity is glorious and he can barely breathe. Karl’s tongue is stroking his cock over and over and the sensation is pin-prick sharp and he can’t stop the rushing contractions around those hot, thick fingers pushed deep inside him, and his balls feel so incredibly tight and his breath hitches and everything seems to freeze and then rush into blinding, throbbing focus all at once.

 

His fingers tighten in Karl’s hair as he lets himself cum, shuddering and whining and hot. He feels himself shooting, white and sticky, down that impossibly tight throat and loses himself in it. Karl’s fingers fuck him through his orgasm, stroking and curling and pressing, and he’s so oversensitive that he wants it to stop but it _can’t_ stop because maker do those fingers feel good right _there_. In a high, paper-thin whine, he says Karl’s name again and again like a mantra on his lips. As he comes down, chest heaving with barely restrained whimpers, Karl smirks up at him and slowly slides his fingers out from his arse and his mouth away from his cock. He whines at the sight of Karl swallowing thickly around his cum. A white slick drip of it trickles down the side of his mouth and into his beard and all at once Anders has tugged him up to kiss him, messy and desperate and sickeningly grateful, tasting himself on the other man’s tongue. It is when Karl pulls him away, cradling his face in his sticky palms, licking and sucking at the join between his jaw and his neck, the place that always makes him shiver, that he knows he is done for.

 

I have something to show you, Karl whispers in his ear between kisses and endearments, fingers splaying and stroking over Ander’s heaving rib-cage and making him shudder. Do you want me to give you more? Do you trust me?

 

Anders is nodding helplessly and Karl smiles, all lusting sex-damp eyes and tousled hair. He holds his right hand up for Anders to see, and he watches with poorly hidden fascination as the palm fills with a blaze of greenish blue. The creation magic sparks and dances and casts an ethereal glow across the rows of glass potion bottles. He watches the trails of green light flare and swirl as Karl carefully brings his hand between them and wraps his fingers around Anders’ cock.

 

When the magic releases, it rushes immediately to his head in a blinding thrumming haze of need. The pressure of fingers on his skin is suddenly liquid silk and fire that sends smokey trails of pleasure blooming up his ribcage and across his collarbones and down into his every vein. Blood is thumping in his ears and when he blinks his vision shimmers like light across water. He lets out a breathy whine and curves his spine roughly back against the shelves, shivering at the firm hard slam of the wood into his back, and pushes into the heat of the hand gripping his already-hard cock. His lungs are filling with a heady perfume of spices and musk and cold, blind need, and his tongue is suddenly heavy in his mouth, desperate to lick and suck and caress. It is sumptuously toxic, like filling his veins with shards of lyrium dust, and it is _most definitely_ not a chantry approved use of creation magic.

 

How the hell did you work this out, he asks, breath gasping in his throat, already rutting helplessly against the grease-slicked palm that cradles him, chasing out more of this glorious over-sensation. Karl is notorious in the Circle for his unorthodox spells and thaumaturgical experiments but they have never had such incredibly _practical_ uses, or felt so horrendously good. Karl smiles, slides his free hand down to pull one of Anders’ thighs up and around his waist, bracing their teetering combined weight against the rows of shelves at the younger man’s back.

 

Experimentation, he says, smiling as he slides his hand down Ander’s cock and past the sensitive skin of his balls and presses his fingers home into the tight, wet heat of him. Anders wonders if Karl has spent weeks perfecting this, lying in a tangle of sweat-damp sheets when he has a moment’s respite from templar eyes and pushing himself into this blaze of avid eagerness and compulsion to cum. The thought of Karl eagerly fucking his own hand makes his throat dry. He is sure the other man must know how acutely he suddenly wants his cock inside of him, filling up the space that makes him mewl and keen, but instead, he fucks him on his fingers in a way that is almost tender. There are sticky trails of oil and sweat pooling down his thighs and it sends blazing shivers up his spine. Karl kisses him and it is all teeth and tongue and hunger. He loses himself in it, hyper-sensual and always craving more. Karl’s fingers are always ink-stained and scratched from experiments, and having them inside him feels incredible. He is teased out slowly on the push and glide of those fingers, stretched open, broken down and dissolved until he is nothing more than fragments of himself, just cold-hot sweat and feverish need and bright bursts of static.

 

He hears himself pleading between kisses for Karl’s cock inside him, for Karl to fuck him the way he needs to be fucked. Silence is long forgotten. He is too far gone to care, whining and gripping desperately at Karl’s shoulders and hair and neck. The hammering of Karl’s heartbeat under his fingertips makes his stomach coil hungrily. Karl lets out little huffs of amusement between heaving breaths and only kisses him harder.

 

When the fingers withdraw from his arse, he whimpers at the loss. But then Karl is shoving his own trousers down his hips just enough to free his cock and throwing Anders’ arms around his neck and pinning him hard against the shelves. A hundred glass bottles tinkle with the force of it and Anders digs his fingers into the other man’s shoulders, feels the heat of his skin, and holds on as he is hastily lifted up, thighs wrapping around the thick heat of Karl’s waist and the hot muscle of Karl’s belly rubbing against his cock. He is confined and vulnerable and it makes him shudder with pleasure.

 

He inhales. And then Karl is claiming his mouth and burying himself inside of him and it is primal and hungry and aggressive. It is nails and muscle and tight, wet burn. Anders pulls away from the kiss and lets out a heady whine between his gritted teeth. No matter how well he is stretched it always feels like this, the intense surge another person inside of him. But with the creation magic licking at his nerves and stroking across his skin he can't help but try to push for more of that wonderful burning stretch. He wriggles against the shelves behind him to gain some purchase and shifts his hips to encourage Karl deeper. There is sweat pooling on Karl’s stomach and it only makes the dragging friction against his almost impossibly hard cock feel more delicious.

 

Fingers scrabbling against skin, he grips Karl’s back like a lifeline and claws sparks of fire magic across his skin and gets lost in the steady thrust of his hips and the pressure pooling and blazing under his ribs. They start slowly, testing the friction between them, but they soon get lost in the force of hard, fast rhythm. Karl is fucking him so deeply that he feels like he might break, but he knows he is already broken, has already _been_ broken so many times, they both have, and that’s what makes this all feel so maker-damned good. Karl’s nails are digging into his arse and somehow in his sex-drunk rush it feels glorious. He presses his sweaty forehead against Karl’s and pants desperately, hips rocking as he seeks out just the right places that make his whole body clench in pleasure. Karl thrusts into him _just there_ and suddenly that perfect pressure shocks through him and it’s only heightened by the creation magic still rushing in his bloodstream. His fingers turn to claws and explode in white-hot sparks that cascade down Karl’s back. Karl grins and fucks him even harder against the shelves until a bottle falls off and smashes on the floor. He can feel his body involuntarily spasming and tightening, winding itself into a coil of pleasure in his balls that begs and pleads to be released.

 

He’s so close, he can feel it. His mouth tastes of Karl and salt and euphoria and the thrill of being shattered to nothing under somebody else’s hands and he’s clenched so tightly that he knows he can’t last. Grey eyes flicker up to meet his, a wordless question, and he whines needily. He needs more. He needs to be pushed until he breaks. Anders cannot see Karl’s fingers flicking as he casts the force spell, but he feels it in the sudden firm grip that tightens like a hand around his throat. His eyes start to water as he chokes, and it only makes everything tighter and harder and blindingly intense. His spine is on fire and his ribs feel too tight and his cock feels so hard that he thinks he might die. The room is spinning and he’s so damn _close._ He needs to cum so badly that he’s almost delirious with it. He presses his sweating forehead to Karl’s and grinds down helplessly, trying to get more friction, more heat, _more_.

 

Karl pounds into him and the whole world narrows to the rush of tingling in his belly and the friction of skin against skin. The little sounds in his throat get higher and higher and higher and then he gasps and there's a sound in his throat that might be Karl’s name. Anders’ eyes squeeze shut and he can barely breathe but that only makes him cum harder. His fingers scrabble and tighten on Karl’s shoulders and then he's coming, coming with Karl’s cock  buried in his arse and his magic tight around his throat. Long hot streaks of sticky white splash across their stomachs. His whole body clenches and contracts around Karl as he fucks him through it, and then the magic is gone from his throat and the first gasp he takes is orgasmic. His eyes are swimming and his heart is hammering in his chest. Every nerve is prickling and he whines and whimpers and Karl is all that he knows. He kisses him desperately as his chest explodes with something that feels like fire and smoke and snapped string.

 

He is always so tight after he’s cum, and he can tell that it’s driving Karl mad because the other man’s thrusts become erratic and jerking, and he swears under his breath in one long string of Ander profanity that crescendos with a deep groan of frustration. He babbles a meaningless string of praises and endearments and profanity like some kind of hymn to Anders and his goddamn beautiful tight arse. Anders focuses on clenching and unclenching around the cock fucking into him, licks a wet trail from the soft skin of Karl’s throat to the edge of his ear, tastes salt and musk, and whispers that he wants to be filled with cum. It is like an order. He clings on tightly and feels Karl’s jaw clench and his nails sink into Anders’ arse as his hips stutter. And then he is overwhelmed by the particular satisfaction of hot cum shooting into him in a sticky rush. He almost mewls in pleasure, suddenly over-full and over-tight and sticky.

 

They exhale as one, and for a moment the store cupboard is filled with nothing but the sound of gradually slowing breaths. Anders dozily peppers kisses along Karl’s neck, sated and comfortable. The Circle doesn’t allow space for much tenderness, but he clings to these rabbit-hearted moments and feels that at least it is something. His whole body thrums softly with delicious post-climax lethargy, and Karl’s chest heaving against his feels like some minor heaven.

 

You are the one good thing about Kinloch, he says quietly, and means every word. The way that Karl kisses him is all the reciprocation he needs. They don’t dare to call whatever this is between them love, not even in their native tongue. But it feels something like it.

 

* * *

 

**VI.**

 

His Harrowing takes place in the autumn. It is much later than it ought to be, the product of his magic manifesting itself so late. Usually, those with late developing abilities end up tranquil, unable to ever master the confusion of their new talents. Anders succeeds - insofar as he makes it through the ritual free from the claws of demon possession and without a templar sword embedded in his chest. But as soon as he wakes, bleary and nauseous in the infirmary, Karl’s hand soothing along his shoulders in concern and holding back his hair as he retches miserably into a metal pail that smells like herbs and cat piss, he knows from the crushing exhaustion in his stomach that he can’t stave off the inevitable drop. The overwhelming heaviness that settles in his rib-cage now and then like a parasite creeps up through his anatomy until it has him in a chokehold and he cannot struggle free.

 

Perhaps it is Karl’s endless fascination with experimental magic that sets the idea in his head. Perhaps it is sheer blind desperation. The result is the same. He decides to try to heal himself. He spends days considering how best to direct the spirit power inwards towards the tangled fluctuations that his own mind seems intent on pushing him through, convinced that he can find a way to weave them apart and back together again. The human head is a delicate thing. The human _mind_ may as well be a fragment of dust he is attempting to fix with a blacksmith’s anvil. No amount of gentleness will shield him from the fact that this is a terribly stupid thing to do. He is keenly aware that it must be a well-prepared and calculated process, but he also knows that he is running out of time, wobbling on the threshold of that all-consuming tiredness that swallows him whole with its hungry black teeth. Despite - or perhaps _because of_ \- the imminent onset of the mind-crumbling malaise, he forces himself to study furiously, reading as many accounts of healing involving the mind as he possibly can. Irving even suggests one day, finding him ink-stained and frowning with concentration, that Anders has been reformed by his Harrowing, finally behaving the way a mage ought to - with dedication and scholarship. The reality is that, without the straining fear of being made tranquil, he can push the limits of his abilities until they are burning. If Greagoir almost has an aneurysm every time Karl comes up with a new not-technically-illegal spell, the shock of what Anders is attempting would probably kill him twice over.

 

Throughout each day he winds himself into increasingly complex knots of tangled limbs as he reads, and devours every text he can find that holds any relevance. When he cannot sleep, he lies in his new bed in the mage quarters (which are very much the same as the apprentice quarters aside from a slightly more comfortable mattress and a slightly more overwhelming amount of incense), and uses the light of a candle to thumb through page after page of research notes and biographies.

 

Anders has no wish to inadvertently render himself tranquil or addled. He needs only to read a handful of accounts to realise that it is a very real danger. Much older, wiser mages have destroyed the mind through attempted healing. But he is so _tired_ of the devastating lows that leave him barely even able to eat, when everything feels smeared with hues of grey. Neither can he stomach the repeated threat of the sickening rush when everything thrums and moves all too quickly. It is, he decides, worth the risk. He does not mention his plan to Wynne or Irving, for fear that they will try to stop him. After many evenings spent biting his tongue and carefully monitoring the way that Karl smiles when he looks at him, he finally resigns himself, with regret that makes his chest ache, to keeping it a secret from him as well. Karl, with all of his knowledge and experiments, will know the risks. They have grown too close for him to believe for one second that Karl will let him attempt something that might be fatal.

 

His years in the Circle have not tamed him - he is still the bane of almost every templar with the misfortune to be assigned to Kinloch, and Irving spends many hours in quiet despair at whatever his latest misdemeanour happens to be. He still rages and spits at the gaudy armour whenever he sees it and feels fire prickling on the edge of his grasp. Anders will never be tame, but they have at least transformed him into a proficient spirit healer. He has even managed to excel Wynne in many respects, a fact that he is quietly proud of, particularly when Karl watches him practice and scribbles down notes from his little leather-and-vellum island of knowledge. He knows that whatever disease has been scratching and nibbling away at his mind, it is not something within the abilities of a creation specialist or a herbalist. Anders, however, is neither. He is something rarer, something more, and it is this that assures him that he at least stands a chance of success.

 

It is late at night when he decides to make his attempt. He carefully slips a note into the back of one of Karl’s many books, explaining his intentions, should his plan fail. It has taken days to find the words to use, and he has scratched out so many versions of it that the fireplace has been fluttering constantly with scraps of charred parchment. Eventually, he settled for a simple apology of only a few meagre lines, and the old words; _those who wish for good must seek it_. He hopes that Karl will understand. Since the moment they were dragged into the Circle and turned over and over in its grasping hands to be shaped and moulded, they have never been able to use the words that they want to anyway. He unwittingly signed away his right to them the minute that fire from his hands burned down a barn and let the ash fly on the wind.

 

Silently, he retrieves a tiny phial of powdered valerian root, which sits in the bottom of a tissuey nest of paper he has stashed down one boot. He has used the herbalist’s scales to weigh out a quantity sufficient to relax him and allow him safe access to his own mind, without leaving him so utterly groggy that he is at risk of accidentally shredding himself to pieces. He needs to be calm but not dozy, and he has devoted hours to studying every herbalist’s formula and equation to ensure that the dose is correct. He wrinkles his nose at the salty-death scent of it. Careful to avoid spilling any, he begins to mix it into a flask of lyrium, watching as the powder drowns and dances helplessly in a sea of silver-blue liquid potential, catalysed by the swell of magic. Finally, he allows himself to pull cool, incense-laden air into his lungs, mutters a half-hearted prayer to Andraste, and tips back the concoction. It leaves a sharp metal-salt-dirt taste on his tongue that makes acid shoot down his throat and almost makes him retch, but he keeps it down. Almost instantly, it makes his veins crackle with light and possibility just as it soothes his mind and reduces his heartbeat to a low, peaceful thrum.

 

It takes a moment to adjust to the dizziness induced by this duality, and he continues to breathe in the way he has been taught to, deep and slow and measured. His head is full of smoke - pouring and billowing and alive, but cloudy, leaving the pungent taste of ash on his tongue. When his mind clears, he shapes a barrier, pulls it from the intangible essence flowing through his skin. Anders focuses on sustaining the membrane of energy that he is created, lets himself slip into his familiar role as healer, and he is ready.

 

Reaching inside of his own body feels clumsy and unnatural, like wading through a river backwards against the current. He has healed minor injuries before, but never anything that required such intense focus. Calling on the aid of his compassion spirit, all tender green and devotional song, he sinks into the web of his own anatomy, senses the familiar geography of organs and sinews and arterial rivers. He whip-cracks up his spine like a synapse, until he is in his head, feeling the particular boundaries and vessels that lie there. Calm and brightly alive with the flare of his magic all at once, he senses out the intricate vascular contours and the sinewy physiography of himself. Anders wills himself to keep his breathing rhythmic and controlled as he feels the bubbling chaos of his mind. It feels so fragile in his grasp, tangled and coiled in its infinite pathways, like a bright ball of moss.

 

The first green-and-light spectral tug shoots through him physically with something that is almost pain. He jerks involuntarily and tries not to let the acrid taste of panic reach his mouth. When he tries again, his breathing is slightly shallower than it should be. He continues. He cannot stop half-way. Skating the crevices of himself, he eases and pulls his own essence into shape and feels like a god. He reforms himself like a shapeshifter, unravels the seemingly endless thread of his own thoughts and memories to fold them back together again. He is bigger than himself, bursting with awful energy and bright fluid seams of magic. When he finally opens his eyes, the world is different.

 

His chest is lighter and his vision seems clearer and the snarling black-toothed disease-creature in his gullet is, for the first time in years, quiet. He feels _whole_ in a way that he can barely remember feeling, and he almost sobs from the relief of it. He flexes his fingers, blinks, glances down at his own hands and thinks _I did this_. His stomach is sparking but it is with measured joy, not blazing euphoria. Anders actually laughs.

 

And then it snaps. And the world gives way.

 

He feels it physically as much as he does spiritually. It is the splintering crack of bone and sharp edges stained with mucus and blood and synovial fluid. It is a tide of chaotic emotions flooding back into his senses so fast that he chokes. He grabs at his own head as though he can hold it together with his hands and gasps and whimpers and clenches his teeth and tries to remember how to breathe.

 

When the pain finally stops, he blinks back water from his eyes and feels the vertigo of his own mind. The grasping fingers of lethargy and the heavy weight of an emptiness that he cannot name threaten to crush him. It is back. Nothing has changed.

 

Desperately, he tries again. He is out of valerian but he has more lyrium. He tries again and again and again and each time it shivers for a second, just to give him a taste of what he _could_ have been. And then it fractures with such a sickening explosion of agony that he almost screams.

 

Eventually, he can’t try any more. The frustration wins out. The prickling, teary anger at his own inability, at the uselessness of magic, manifests itself in a blaze that shoots from his hands so violently that the desk in front of him suddenly roars into flame. He does not care. The flames scream in his eyes and somewhere behind him, at the edge of his consciousness, someone actually screams. His mind is awash with that first time that he set the barn on fire, that first time he realised that he was tainted and monstrous and sickening. Anders lets the magic rush until it singes the tips of his own fingers and the air smells of funeral pyres. He wants to feel it. He wants to feel _anything_ that is not this.

 

He unearths a bottle of Aqua Magus, drinks until his tongue is numb, and then keeps on going. He’s not sure if it’s a salve or a death-wish. He is blazing and out of control and dirty, because he has _always_ been dirty, a creature of disease and filthy magic. Everything in his life is dirt and ash and he wants it all to burn. He isn’t sure whether he finds Karl or whether Karl finds him, only that he sinks his fingers into the fabric of Karl’s robes and presses his face to his chest and sobs until he can hardly breathe, drunk and frustrated and smarting with the sting of his own failure. Karl’s hands are immediately ablaze with creation magic, trying to find something that he can heal, near-frantic with asking again and again what is wrong. He is almost too drunk to speak but it doesn’t matter, because he can never explain the chaos in his own head in a way that expresses how _tiring_ it is, how much he wants to be outside of himself. Karl’s arms are warm and steadying and he smells of sparks and spice and ink and he lets himself be held in them, raging with frustration and disappointment.

 

I just wanted to be whole, he manages. I just wanted to be _whole_. He has wanted nothing else since he was brought to the Circle, twelve and shivering and broken and dirty. No matter how hard he tries, he constantly feels like he is cracked, run through with lyrium veins that threaten to explode and stinking disease that sits in his throat like bile.

 

But you are, Karl whispers again and again, you’re _whole_. You always were.

 

He knows it is a lie. The healer is never whole. The healer sinks into other people’s bones other people’s aches and leaves himself a map of other people’s pains. Spirit healing is not gentleness but blood and ephemera and repeated near-ritual sacrifice. The lessons the spirit healer is constantly forced to learn aren’t just composed of unravelling theory and measured breaths and deconstruction of the body’s peculiar anatomy. There are lessons in the joy of a newborn’s first struggling breaths, in the thrilling ease of soothing away an ache, in hearing the incredible rush of the human heart. There are lessons in the sheer human need for love and affection and home. But there are also lessons that scratch and claw and lay bare the things that can never, never be healed. These are the hardest lessons of all.

 

Anders never stops learning.  
  
  
  
-Fin-

**Author's Note:**

> [You can find me on twitter as @mitten_crab!](https://twitter.com/mitten_crab/)   
> 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Lessons in Healing (Podfic)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6957355) by [therealmnemo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/therealmnemo/pseuds/therealmnemo)




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